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As memory is conceived in metaphorical terms, it is immediately integrated with the cultural presumptions borne by the metaphors—technically, the metaphorical vehicles—themselves. Memory is always memorializing—however fleetingly, inconsistently, or inadequately on a given occasion. It is to redeem the perishing of particulars in a selfsameness that conspires in the present to persist into the future. One important characteristic of both memorialization and commemoration is the perdurance of their objects—of the determinative effect of those objects. Attitudes toward commemorative style are...

As memory is conceived in metaphorical terms, it is immediately integrated with the cultural presumptions borne by the metaphors—technically, the metaphorical vehicles—themselves. Memory is always memorializing—however fleetingly, inconsistently, or inadequately on a given occasion. It is to redeem the perishing of particulars in a selfsameness that conspires in the present to persist into the future. One important characteristic of both memorialization and commemoration is the perdurance of their objects—of the determinative effect of those objects. Attitudes toward commemorative style are culturally and historically specific. Not only do monuments and memorials inspire memory, but they influence the way memories are recalled and recounted. Memory is always actual, a living bond with the eternal present, and because it is emotional and magical, it adopts only details that give it solace. It nourishes itself with fleeting memories, telescopic, global or floating, particular or symbolic, sensible to all transferences, screens, censures, and projections. It installs remembrance in the sacred.